With the entry of my “evil” twin brother Jed into the world of low-end didactic cartooning,the hue and cry has been overwhelming; we need a contest.

Who, indeed, is the best blogger/cartoonist in the Twin Cities?

For years, it’s been generally recognized that Tom “Swiftee” Swift- auteur of “Life In The Dumpster” -has been the dean of Twin Cities blog cartoonists. “LITD” has long combined trenchant satiric observation with the sort of gritty anti-style that only the best cartoonists can master.

But much has changed since “Dumpster” earned its first accolades. Ken “Avidor” Weiner continues his prolific output under various names, some not even made public. Tiger Lilly, from the Night Writer blog, has driven minimalism to its far edge. Joe “Learned Foot’ Tucci from Kool Aid Report made “Fleen” – a story of a loveable family of prickly cyphers – into a local tradition before perversely pulling it from circulation. And I gotta say, I think my twin bro is an up-and-comer. (We’ll leave Dan Lacey from Faithmouse out of it for now; in contrast with the rest of the list, he’s an actual professional and recognized artist).

So who’s the best?

We’ll let you decide!

First – the nominees:Nomination 1: Tom Swift

Few artists make “crudity” – in style, technique and content – a tool in and of itself like Tom “Swiftee” Swift.

The cartoons – done in Microsoft Paint, usually with no more than a thumb and index finger – and intended tolook crude, slapdash and half-finished, as if Swift is commenting on the overproduced, over-colored, over-stylized, self-consciously “Retro” stylings of too many underground cartoons.

Nomination 2: Fleen

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci’s “Fleen”, set in a fictional void amidst a larger void, is an ironic commentary on the overly-structured pointillism of most “post-modern” cartoons.

Tucci’s been praised for his style – deftly suggesting dynamism and motion even though his characters remain superficially motionless, as if daring one to keep up. It reminds one of the great Danish neo-structuralist cartoons from the sixties through the early eighties.

It’s edgy stuff; some wondered if it didn’t take too much out of Tucci for it to continue, when he pulled his Bill Watterson-like retirement from cartooning last year.Nomination 3: Planet Terry

This strip is drawn by my twin brother Jed, who says “my aim is to convey everything – love, hate, rage, sex, laughter – with as little effort as possible”.e

Some criticize his work as derivative and excessively inky. You be the judge.Nominee 4: Anorexics Inaneymous

The sine qua non of minmalism, AI – drawn by “Tiger Lily” from Night Writer – is a deft commentary on life in the 21st century.

Minimal as it is, the strip conveys deftly conveys an amazing range of feeling.Nominee 5: Bicyclopolis

Ken “Avidor’ Weiner draws Bicyclopolis.

Looking as if it was cribbed from a 1977 issue of High Times, Bicyclopolis depicts (apparently) a fictional world where peoples’ hands are frozen into grotesque parodies of…I dunno, ham carved into hand shapes. Which is a searing commentary on man’s inhumanity to cartoon hands.

It’s a tough decision, folks. Which is why I’m fobbing it off on all of you.

Who is the best online cartoonist in the Twin Cities?

UPDATE: And that’s a wrap:

Congratulations to all the contestants – because in the world of Twin Cities blog cartooning, just showing up makes you a winner!

Conrad DeFiebre is not one of the bad ones, as a general rule, as far as media types are concerned. While he was a Strib writer for about 600 years, he was also one of the reporters that could tell a balanced, fair story. He was the first reporter from either of the dailes (to say nothing the TV statiosn) to be bothered with reporting the actual facts on the Concealed Carry debate back in the nineties. For that, I’ve personally given credit where it was due, not that anyone cares.

Long story short: He’s always been a good reporter.

But these days he works for MN2020, the regional “non-partisan” “progressive” think tank. Which is apropos not much, except that for someone whose gig has been telling entire, complete stories for his entire career, he kinda, well, doesn’t.

; I’ll direct you to read the piece to find any examples of history at all, much less conservatives “re-writing” it.

Opposition to modern transit development may be on the wane in most parts of Minnesota,

“May” it be? Well, I guess we have to take Mr. DeFiebre’s word for it. Perhaps he knows of a Minnesota Poll on the subject?

but it’s alive and well in one surprising location: The Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.

“Light rail is an expensive investment without return except as an exercise in chest-thumping to make a city feel like it’s in the big leagues.”

That’s a quote from Lyle Wray, former Citizens League executive director, posted in big letters in the history center’s long-running transportation exhibit “Going Places: The Mystique of Mobility.” It enjoys equal billing with more mildly-worded praise of light rail in the display’s vintage Soo Line boxcar.

OK, so we have a qualitative judgment about the “mildness” or, I dunno, “spiciness” of wording?

I’ll let that pass.

What’s worse, an accompanying video clip features half a dozen anti-light rail comments, some from anonymous on-the-street interviewees, some from inveterate transit bashers at the Taxpayers League of Minnesota.

Er – so what? Isn’t it refreshing that the Minnesota History Center,noted conservative tools that they are (note to non-Minnesotans: they are not; they are more given to hagiographic treatment of old labor and Farmor/Labor Party organizers) actually presents both sides of a story?

I digress. My question: Where is history, and its conservative re-write?

Worse yet, the exhibit also includes plenty of promotion of personal rapid transit, a thoroughly failed technology that has been embraced by both the rabid right and the lunatic left, mainly as a foil to responsible transit proposals.

“Rabid”? “Lunatic?” Such invective from a…reporter? Why, it’s almost as if DeFiebre is getting talking points from…someone with an ax to grind?
And let’s be clear: Personal Rapid Transit seems to be a rather pie-in-the-sky proposal that’d crisscross cities with small rails for tiny, taxi-like rail cars whose destinations could be programmed for anywhere on the system, rather than shuttling back and forth on a single line. It’s utterly un-tested, and it’s the kind of thing that draws all sorts of fawning resolutions at caucus-time demanding government support, and its cost estimates (which are usually about 10% those of light rail lines per rail mile) strike this tech/engineering industry hanger-on as hopelessly pollyannaish.

But “Thoroughly failed?” It can not “thorougly fail” unless it’s been “thorougly tested”.

But that kind of invective on an utterly speculative subject like PRT? Why that can only mean one thing:

Minneapolis artist, activist and blogger Ken Avidor tipped me off…

[scraaaaatch]

Ken “Avidor” Weiner is indeed a blogger. He’s an “artist” of sorts as well – the only “cartoonist” in the Twin Cities less talented that Swiftee. But he’s indeed an “activist” for light rail; so active, indeed, that he felt he needed at least two of him.

Note to Conrad DeFiebre: you might wanna pick better sources for this stuff. Not that “Sources” matter so much in your new career – clearly John Fitzgerald is mushy on the subject – but still.

But yet again, I digress.

The post is a puff piece about the wonders of light rail, and how short-sheeted they allegedly are in the MHS presenation on the subject.

So where is the the ballyhooed “conservative rewrite of history?” It’s the present. And the issue of “is light rail a boon or a doggle” is very, very Very, VERY, VERY much in the balance.

Because even if oil runs out tomorrow, the free market will have developed a hydrogen-powered car (the ultimate Personal Rapid Transit) and a network of nuclear powered hydro stations long before government will have built rails to haul the gray, lumpen hordes of proles about.

Weiner stole some pics from our good friend Ben’s blog. Ben, in a comment section (the cowardly Weiner supplies no email address), politely asked Weiner to take the pictures down. Weiner, displaying the class he become known for, deleted Ben’s comments, restricted outsiders from commenting, and promised to keep stealing the intellectual property of others.

What makes Avidor-Weiner’s actions especially laughable, is that immediately above the first post containing stolen material flagged by Ben, is a post ripping on a plagiarism flap at True North (captured in beautiful haiku here).

Yet another “prominent” leftyblogger (or at least one who is cited with breathless credulity by the local Sorosphere) is caught with his ethical pants down. So what will their side do about it?

Will Blogger Copy-and-Paster Young continue to breathlessly support Ken “Avidor” Weiner, thief and coward?

Tucci notes that the “rules” have morphed a bit…

With the explosion of online publishing, things are now a little bit different. Instead of the old way of asking permission before using someone else’s property, now it’s pretty much the norm to take first and ask for forgiveness later. I think that’s a fair trade off and efficient way of doing things.

…and the problem we face:

I don’t think anyone with an iota of class or integrity would refuse to take down a picture posted on his or her blog if the owner of that picture asked. In fact I have obliged such a complaint in the past. It’s called class. It’s called respecting the rights and the property of others.

I’ve honored such requests as well.

It’s that “class” and “integrity” bit. Or at least “not being a juvenile”.

The media has convened in the press room at Shot In The Dark world HQ.

The reporters are taking their seats. The buzz of anticipation settles into a tense quiet as Mr. Berg steps to the podium.

Let’s join the questioning:

———-

Reporter A (Minnesota Public Radio): Mr. Berg? It’s been noted that you’ve achieved the one thing that was standing between you and the putative “big time” – you’ve actually gotten your own stalker. Would you care to comment on this? And I have a followup

Mitch Berg: Well, on the one hand, yes – it would seem that I do have a stalker. Actually, a stalker and a half – I’ve noticed the the “Lloydletta” blog names me something like 11 times in the past two weeks.

[Assembled reporters laugh politely, if uneasily]

But in fact, yes – it would seem that former porn-mag temp Ken “Avidor” Weiner has fallen into that role, using one of his twenty blogs and, apparently, his video camera and mad editing skeelz to draw the attention of his adoring public…

[more laughter]

…yes, adoring public to me. So – “good” news, I have a stalker. The bad news? He’s a piss-poor one!

Reporter A (Minnesota Public Radio): So to follow up – do you have any comment for the record?

Mitch Berg: Well, my good friend Joe Tucci – whom Mr. Weiner managed to “out” last week as the real name behind “Learned Foot”, and can I say “hey, great research skeelz, that took you almost exactly three years!’ – put it well, I think:

All Weiner knows how to do is steal off others’ websites, indulge his (erroneous) stereotypes and piddle his crap all over the internet (notice how I didn’t mention Photoshop) . Why does…

What the hell?

I feel like such a looser loser. Is this how stalkers feel all the time?

I don’t know that anyone could put it better!

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): Er, Mr. Berg? Do you mind if we call you “Mitch?”

Mitch Berg: …er, Miss? That’s “Mister Weiner”. “Avidor” was the name of an actual artist. It’d be like asking y’all to call me “Mister Hendrix” or “Mister Miller” after spending twenty years making a mockery of my real name. Anyway, carry on.

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): …sorry. Anyway, they have made a small cottage industry of making up nicknames for you. You’re referred to sometimes as “Blogger Berg”…

Mitch Berg: …that would, in fact, be gramatically and factually correct. I am a blogger, and my name is Berg! One adjective, one noun.

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): …and “Gasbag of the Midway”.

Mitch Berg: Given that I share this distict with Ellen Anderson and Jay Benanav, I must say that’s kind of an honor! Also…improbable.

Reporter B (WCCO-TV): So do any of those names…I don’t know, faze you in any way?

Mitch Berg: I grew up a tall, scrawny, greasy-haired, uncoordinated, athletically-inept cello-playing brainiac and a Bears fan. I got called worse than that around the Thanksgiving dinner table.

[laughter]

Next question?

Reporter C (Dump Bachmann): Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit?

Mitch Berg: I’m actually on record opposing it.

Reporter C (Dump Bachmann): But why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why, why why, Blogger Berg?

Mitch Berg: I’ve never supported it.

Reporter C (Dump Bachmann): But why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why, why why, oh Gasbag?

Mitch Berg: Nope. Never.

Reporter C (Dump Bachmann): But why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit? Why are you on record in support of Personal Rapid Transit…

[Reporter is tasered. By fellow reporters. His carried – with difficulty – from the hall.]

Mitch Berg: Next question?

Reporter D (Sixty Minutes): You make light of this purportered “stalker”…

Mitch Berg: …well, yeah, I do. This guy doesn’t have the balls to really do the job. He’s a gutless little moral, social and intellectual gimp who skulks around and makes photoshop “cartoons” and logically-and-factually-void proclamations because he can’t hold his own in a face to face…anything. Debate, discussion, fight, whatever. He’s nothing. Zero. I’ve wiped smarter opponents and bigger threats off the sole of my shoe walking through Mears Park.

Reporter E (Star/Tribune): Do you have any comment about Scott Johnson writing for True North along with Tom Swift, as our man “Avidor” reported in “Buzz.mn”?

Mitch Berg: …and Black Ink, and the Daily Kos, and the Daily Mole?

Reporter E (Star/Tribune): Er…yes.

Mitch Berg: OK. Three parts to my response.

Scott and Tom are both friends of mine. Ken “Avidor” Weiner isn’t fit to carry either of their gig bags, as a writer or a person.

Weiner’s big “point” against Tom is that he’s “nasty” – that he hits, he claims, below the belt. It’s crap, of course. But, um, so? Welcome to the blogosphere! It’s not like Weiner is a model of detached restraint! His beef is the same one Salieri had with Mozart; he realizes he’s not as good as either – or any – of the people he stalks.

Eric Black? Steve Perry? You share a local left-wing blogosphere with Ken “Avidor” Weiner and Kevin McKay and Mark “Revolutionary Gonads” Gisleson. By the standard that the Daily Mole and Black Ink are endorsing, you are guiltyi by association. Defend yourselves.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: Sure, in the same way that a three-year-old “hit a nerve” when she colors on the walls!

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: [Thinks] Or maybe in the same way as Andy Milonakis…no, not quite that bad.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: Nope.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: Nope-er.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: Still no.

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: [yawns]

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Reporter F (Lloydletta): Oooh! It looks like Ken Avidor has hit a nerve!

Mitch Berg: I will give my next response in sign language:

Reporter G (Ha’aretz): You’ve been very critical of the local leftymedia…Mitch Berg: Look, when a hack like Karl Bremer can get coverage in the Daily Mole and Black Ink, for a baldfaced “guilt by association” smear, and get it with breathless credulity to boot, it should make people ask questions.

Last question…

Reporter H (E News): Any truth to the bit we read in the Strib’s Blog House that…

Ken “Avidor” Weiner is apparently using the Strib’s “Buzz.mn” to carry on his obsession with trying to “smear” regional conservatives with the most tenuous possible “guilt” by association.

Let’s see how many times the former Screw Magazine “art director” bobbles the “facts”:

Time Magazine named Powerline Blog of the Year in 2004. Perhaps as an indicator of how low the GOP has sunk,

Well, there’s one. True North is utterly unconnected with the Minnesota GOP. Indeed, distance from the party is enshrined in the “Manifesto” I wrote for the site.

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use its publication to spread lies?

Powerline’s Scott Johnson has been reduced to blogging with Tom “Swiftee” Swift, one of the nastiest, sleaziest bloggers in Minnesota’s political blogosphere.

Tom is nasty – but as he’s never actually worked for Screw magazine, that accusation comes across as a bit…disingenuous?

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use its official blog to carry on his vendettas?

If you have spent any time surfing Minnesota’s political blogs, you will have come across the nasty comments of MOB troll Tom Swift, alias “Swiftee”. Swiftee’s modus operandi is to make the blogosphere as creepy and scary as this picture he posted of himself on his blog.

Weiner then goes on, essentially, to whinge about how sad Swiftee’s cartoons (along with the fact that Swiftee is generally regarded as a better cartoonist than Weiner) make him.

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use their house blog as his therapeutic sounding board?

I’m a pretty normal guy. I’m 44, I live in an old house in Saint Paul with a couple kids, two cats and a dog. I drive a four-door but I’d rather bike. I like good beer, play guitar and a slew of other instruments, have the odd date, meet my friends at Keegans’ when I can – you know. Pretty normal stuff.

Of course, when I was 16 I started working in radio. Now, working part-time at a station in North Dakota is the laxest possible definition of “public figure” that can exist in nature – but even then and there (and over my next years, as my career took me to the Twin Cities), some of the wierdness that attends “public” life caught up with me. The anti-semitic calls and threats (although I’m not remotely Jewish, the “Berg” name irks some); the occasional lonely person with weird ideas, the people who can’t take disagreement in stride – I’ve been through ’em all. And I’ve pretty much ignored them. Because they’re pretty much idiots.

Over the last few years, I’ve duked it out with the people who run the “Dump Bachmann” blog. I don’t pay ’em a lot of attention – with their fevered tone and breathless conspiracy-mongering and seeing spies in the bushes, they’re like a homegrown Democrat Underground, and pretty much a laughingstock among real bloggers and media. They’re the kinds of thing best ignored (except for Michele Bachmann; knowing that such a bunch of tinfoil-hatted whoopdidoos were stalking her, I’m fairly convinced, was worth at least a point in Bachmann’s victory last November – the best showing by a Republican on the top rail of results.

So at worst, they’re a mixed blessing. As a rule.

I’ve also pretty much dismissed Ken Weiner, AKA “Ken Avidor”. I dismiss him because he’s pretty dismissable. A former art director at a pr0n mag even other pr0n merchants giggle at with derision, it’s not hard to see why even Tom Swift has better cartooning chops.

A while ago – before the September 15 counterprotest I helped organize with the folks at True North – I got an anonymous email from someone at a Google IP address:

Crazy Ken Avidor is planning upon coming to your counter protest with his cameras, specifically to get pictures of you. I know this on a first hand basis. He’s a f*cking moron, don’t give him any fodder.

I responded at the time – if you want to talk to me, just ask. I’ll take on all comers, because – depending on who you are and what your motivations are – I either have no trouble talking across ideological divides (hence I had a great time talking on MPR and with Chuck Olson in the past few months), or I’m just plain smarter than you and dealing with your arguments is child’s play (certain other adversaries that shall remain nameless), which is kinda sad considering I’m really no great shakes in the “brain” department myself.

Now, nobody’s under any obligation to ask “hey, mind if I film you”, although it’s generally considered good form by reputable videographers and journalists. Which Avidor, of course, is not.

Last week, Avidor posted the “big scoop” – that I have been known to edit Wikipedia entries. This is, of course, something that’s pretty publicly available. Avidor leapt about like a poo-flinging monkey yapping about the fact that I’ve written, in the past, about the likes of Ed Morrissey, Hugh Hewitt, and the Northern Alliance – without bothering to actually note if anything I wrote was wrong or anything, of course, or whether any of that Wiki editing took place in a men’s room at the airport.

I’m always inclined to ignore this kind of obsessive niggling; I let it go the way of the rantings of the dissociative guy at the back of the bus who skipped his meds.

I wonder if Blogger Berg and Blogger Swiftee are considering swearing out a restraining order yet. This guy is obviously unstable.

This last was over this bit – in which Avidor crosses the line from “demented idiot” to “borderline stalker”, apparently hiding in the bushes and (unlike Michele Bachmann) actually spying and taking pictures of people.

The obvious response is – nothing. Let him slither through the bushes with his little camera. I’ve done nothing in my life that I can’t take in front of the whole world (like, say, work at a pr0n magazine and participate in the victimization of women). I’ve run into people like Avidor before, and they’re nothing to worry about – they don’t have the balls or the brains to do anything but slither about and heckle impotently (just check out the traffic on the DU post. I doubt Avidor has the capacity to be embarassed).

So let me know when he does something that rises to the level of “would matter to vertebrates”.